Mueller defends authority, hearkens back to Garfield administrationBy DARREN SAMUELSOHN 09/28/2018 09:11 PM EDTRobert MuellerAt issue is the case of Andrew Miller, a former aide to Trump confidante Roger Stone who has so far failed in his bid to knock special counsel Robert Mueller out of his post. | Brendan Smialowski/AFP/Getty Images

Facebook Twitter Google + Email PrintSpecial counsel Robert Mueller cited more than a century’s worth of presidential scandal on Friday as part of a sweeping legal defense of his own authorities.

The lead Russia prosecutor made the historical references — that attorney generals have needed special investigators dating back to the 1870s — in a legal brief to a federal appeals court considering the case of a reluctant witness tied to a longtime supporter of President Donald Trump who is seeking to have Mueller’s appointment thrown out on constitutional grounds.

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“These instances—involving appointments by Attorneys General under Presidents Garfield, Theodore Roosevelt, Truman, Kennedy, Nixon, Carter, George H.W. Bush, and Clinton—span nearly 140 years and include some of the most notorious scandals in the Nation’s history, including Watergate,” wrote Michael Dreeben, the deputy solicitor general on loan to the Mueller team.

At issue is the case of Andrew Miller, a former aide to Trump confidante Roger Stone who has so far failed in his bid to knock Mueller out of his post by challenging the legitimacy of several subpoenas seeking his documents and testimony in connection to the Russia probe.

A federal district court judge rejected Miller’s bid last month to quash the string of grand jury subpoenas, and the ex-Stone aide was later held in contempt of court — a precursor to his current appeal.

In Friday's brief, Dreeben ticked through the history of Mueller's appointment — including Attorney General Jeff Sessions' recusal from all investigations tied to the 2016 presidential election because of his work on the Trump campaign — in arguing that special counsel was indeed properly appointed under Justice Department regulations.

Mueller is subject to routine supervision and oversight — from Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein because of Sessions' recusal — on everything from his budget to hiring personnel and other key decisions.

“The Attorney General receives a regular flow of information about the Special Counsel’s actions; he can demand an explanation for any of them; and he has power to intervene when he deems it appropriate to prevent a deviation from established Departmental practices," Dreeben explained.

Miller's lawsuit isn't the first to challenge Mueller’s authority.

Two federal judges earlier this year rejected efforts by former Trump campaign chairman Paul Manafort to have Mueller’s appointment invalidated. A Trump-appointed federal judge last month also rejected a bid by the Russian company Concord Management that challenged Mueller's jurisdiction after it was charged in connection to a Kremlin-linked online troll farm accused of targeting the American elections.

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Miller's appeal leans on many of the same arguments raised by Concord, including that Mueller's appointment was flawed at multiple levels — and at its core remains unconstitutional. They say Mueller's power is so vast that he should have been subject to presidential nomination and Senate confirmation, rather than treated as an "inferior" officer who may be appointed and supervised by the attorney general.

While Mueller reports to Rosenstein, Miller's lawyers argue that Justice regulations prevent the deputy attorney general from overturning many of the special counsel's decisions. That authority, they argue, should only be permitted for individuals appointed by the president.

Miller's defense team has an October 9 deadline to file its reply brief. Oral arguments are scheduled for November 8 — just two days after the upcoming midterm election.

Sen. Richard Blumenthal, D-Conn. (right) and Elizabeth Wydra, congressional Democrats' attorney in a case accusing President Trump of violating the Constitution's Foreign Emoluments Clause, speak to reporters in June.Jacquelyn Martin/APAbout 200 Democrats in the House and Senate have won a judge's approval to go ahead with their anti-corruption lawsuit against President Trump.

U.S. District Judge Emmet Sullivan, in Washington, D.C., said the lawmakers have standing to sue Trump. They allege he violates the Foreign Emoluments Clause of the Constitution, as his hotels and other establishments around the world profit from spending and favors by foreign governments.

Justice Department lawyers, representing Trump, contended that only Congress, not its members acting individually, could deal with the emoluments clause.

The Foreign Emoluments Clause bars U.S. officials from accepting gifts or payments from foreign governments unless Congress consents. It's a visible issue, as some foreign dignitaries pay to stay at Trump's hotel while on official visits to the White House.

Trump began his presidency by choosing — unlike other presidents in recent decades — to keep ownership of his businesses. He hasn't asked Congress for consent under the Foreign Emoluments Clause, and the Republican-controlled House and Senate haven't raised the issue with him.

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DOJ argued in court that Trump doesn't have to ask — that Congress can act on its own. The plaintiffs said they need a court order to make Trump obey the Constitution.

Federal Lawsuit Against President Trump's Business Interests Allowed To ProceedPOLITICSFederal Lawsuit Against President Trump's Business Interests Allowed To ProceedThe lawmakers are the second set of plaintiffs to gain standing in an emoluments case against Trump.

A federal judge in Maryland granted standing in July to the attorneys general of the District of Columbia and Maryland, in a suit focused on the hotel near the White House and citing both the foreign and domestic emoluments clauses. Now the attorneys general are seeking documents from the White House and the Trump Organization in the document discovery stage that precedes a trial.

In a third case, the watchdog group Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington and plaintiffs from the hospitality industry were denied standing by a federal judge in New York. CREW has filed an appeal.

Note: Brief commentaries will be posted, between more important political milestones. The above merely describes movements which appear to veer right or left of the center.

It looks like Trump is trying to center himself, especially his approving a Kavanaugh FBI investigation. , only done because of said Democratic and partial Republican insistence, but almost immediately downgrading such a move.

That's interesting but if they actually knew ahead of time , can it be found in some wizard's prophecy? Maybe in the last hidden 7th Seal of the church explaining its hidden significance at the 'end time's? Just a thought

And besides , the fall can be thought as a foreshadowing. But relax, what we know so far of quantum consciousness, there really is no beginning or end, and Nietzsche was on point with recurrence eternally.

The Emperors were given the means to know and prepare and adapt but as emperors go and do, they preferred to believe they would reign forever, and chose to interpret the secret knowledge in that way.

Now fear pervades them and their "little ones", those that relished their bed time stories (the news); and courage and fire pervades those that now are called. The beautiful ones, the innocent, the true.

Never before was the human world so true. This is our awakening. Now love is born into our species.

It is true that liberty is precious; so precious that it must be carefully rationed. ~ Владимир Ильич Ульянов Ленин

U.S. reaches trade deal with Canada and Mexico, providing Trump a crucial winThe new pact is a major step toward completing one of the president's signature campaign promises.

By ADAM BEHSUDI, ALEXANDER PANETTA and DOUG PALMER 09/30/2018 07:42 PM EDT Updated 10/01/2018 12:47 AM EDTTrade ministers from the U.S., Mexico and Canada have reached a deal to revamp the North American Free Trade Agreement, the Trump administration announced late Sunday night.

The new pact, which is being called the U.S.-Mexico-Canada Agreement, is a major step toward completing one of Trump’s signature campaign promises and gives the president a concrete policy win to tout on the campaign trail this fall. It also sets the stage for what is sure to be a high-stakes fight to get the agreement passed by Congress before it can become law.

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The Trump administration already formally notified Congress at the end of August of its plans to sign a new pact and faced a deadline of the end of September to provide a draft of the agreement.

U.S. Trade Representative Robert Lighthizer said in late August that officials are planning to sign with their Canadian and Mexican counterparts by the end of November — a date that would also satisfy Mexico, which is eager to have current President Enrique Peña Nieto sign the deal before his successor takes over Dec. 1.

“It’s a great win for the president and a validation for his strategy in the area of international trade,” a senior administration official said on a call with reporters late Sunday.

People briefed on the outlines of a revamped deal described changes in language governing dairy imports, dispute resolution between countries, limits on online shopping that can be done tax free, and limits on the U.S. threat of auto tariffs.

“It’s a good day for Canada,” Prime Minister Justin Trudeau said as he left the office late Sunday night. He said he would save other comments for an official announcement on Monday.

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A formal vote in Congress won’t be held until 2019, and it is still an open question whether lawmakers — including members of the president's own party who have often clashed with him on trade — will fall in line to support the deal.

Republicans are expected to pay close attention to the final details regarding dispute settlement and intellectual property issues, while Democrats will likely be looking for stricter labor and environmental standards.

Lawmakers from both parties, along with powerful business and industry groups, are also examining whether new provisions, such as stricter automotive rules, may end up making life more difficult for domestic companies rather than easier.

A senior administration official highlighted the “great result” on dairy issues that was achieved. The pact opens up the Canadian dairy market to U.S. exports at a level higher than the 3.25 percent market share the Obama administration negotiated under the Trans-Pacific Partnership.

The official also said that Canada agreed to eliminate a recent milk-ingredient pricing program that U.S. farmers complained had dried up demand for their exports of the product.

In exchange, Canada was able to preserve dispute settlement language. Canada has historically insisted on an international panel to judge whether the U.S. improperly uses duties as a commercial weapon.

Canada also agreed to an “accommodation” to its auto exports in response to tariffs Trump is expected to impose on vehicle imports for national security reasons, the senior administration official said. That arrangement will likely involve Canada agreeing to a side deal that would restrict its auto exports to a level well above the current volume of trade that flows south of the border, sources close to the talks said.

Lighthizer had hoped to reach an agreement by the end of 2017, a timeline that was extended until the end of March. The three nations failed to make that deadline but have been meeting almost continuously in Washington since as they sought to reach compromises on issues that have been both technically and politically challenging for all three countries.

Now, depending on the outcome of November's midterm elections, control of the House of Representatives may well turn over to Democrats, who may have little incentive to work with a president from the opposite party to ratify a deal that they may not like.

One strategy that circulated earlier this year was a plan to force a vote by withdrawing from the existing NAFTA agreement before the new one takes effect — thus forcing members of Congress to choose between the renegotiated deal or no deal at all.

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Trump indicated last month that he would pursue such tactics, telling reporters in the Oval Office that he would "be terminating the existing deal and going into this deal."

Several prominent lawmakers, however, expressed cautious optimism with the new pact.

“Maintaining a trilateral North American deal is an important prerequisite to preserving and extending those gains and the Trump administration has achieved that goal,” said Sen. Orrin Hatch (R-Utah), chairman of the Senate Finance Committee. “I look forward to reviewing this deal to confirm it meets the high standards of Trade Promotion Authority.”

Under the TPA, Congress will take a straight up-or-down vote without amendments. Those rules also have a series of other steps that also must be followed before the deal can be passed.

Even without congressional approval, having the preliminary deal in hand will give the administration and vulnerable Republicans up for reelection at least the skeleton of a policy achievement to use on the trail.

Officials have said that changes made to automotive rules to increase the amount of content that must be sourced from within NAFTA countries should play well in manufacturing states concerned about the offshoring of jobs.

Meanwhile, leading congressional Democrats say they’re not yet convinced that the new deal represents a significant shift from past trade policies that have rarely earned their support.

“The bar for supporting a new NAFTA will be high,” said Rep. Richard Neal (D-Mass.), the ranking member on the House Ways and Means Committee.

Democrats and their backers in labor unions and environment groups will be looking for a deal they feel can be adequately enforced in terms of upholding worker rights and environmental protections.

Sen. Ron Wyden (D-Ore.) said the ability of the deal to enforce those provisions will be a “crucial test” for a new agreement.

The country’s largest organized labor group also stressed that it will be studying the labor language closely.

“The text we have reviewed, even before the confirmation that Canada will remain part of NAFTA, affirms that too many details still need to be worked out before working people make a final judgment on a deal,” AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka said in a statement.

It remains unclear at this point what the preliminary deal means for the steel and aluminum tariffs the Trump administration has put in place as well as the retaliatory duties Canada and Mexico imposed. Many industry sources and others close to the talks have long expected that reaching a deal would lead the U.S. to lift the tariffs, a move that would lead Canada and Mexico to follow suit.

A senior U.S. administration official said a possible exemption for Canada remains on a separate track from the broader trade negotiations and there was no agreement yet on that issue.

Mexican Economy Secretary Ildefonso Guajardo said in late August that those tariffs — as well as Mexico's retaliatory duties on $3 billion in U.S. products like agricultural goods — would be enforced until the countries are closer to signing an agreement later this year.

Stressing that "the core values that built this nation are at risk," former Vice President Joe Biden on Sunday said the upcoming midterm elections are “bigger than politics,” The Hill reported.

During a speech for the Rhode Island Democratic Party, Biden emphasized that his declaration was not hyperbole, because "our institutions are under assault," and the “invisible moral fabric that holds up a society, a democracy, is being shredded."

Tearing into the Trump administration, Biden said, "We can’t be the generation that let the core values of our institutions and this nation and our standing in the world be destroyed," arguing that “our Republican colleagues are complicit by their silence."

He also slammed the GOP’s handling of the sexual assault allegations against Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh, saying “we witnessed from Republicans on the Senate Judiciary Committee a degree of invective, blind rage and brute partisanship that threatens not only the Senate and the Supreme Court - it threatens the basic faith the American people have in our institutions."

Biden, who chaired the Senate Foreign Relations Committee for years, also criticized Trump for his handling of foreign policy.

Biden said he received calls from world leaders who asked him, "'What’s happened, Joe?... What’s going on? What happened to that shining city on the hill?'"

"I understand the president said in West Virginia that he loves the president of North Korea because they’ve exchanged letters," he said, referring to Trump's remarks on Saturday that he and North Korean leader Kim Jong-un have fallen "in love."

"Look, I’m not looking for a war but I’m looking for some reality," Biden said.

-because it will be helpful to look back and perhaps see how the different pieces fit, ex post facto; and besides, politics is a form of art.[/quote

Does this constitute a real charge or, was it dreamed up on a propaganda machine?

Congressional investigators have confirmed that a top FBI official met with Democratic Party lawyers to talk about allegations of Donald Trump-Russia collusion weeks before the 2016 election, and before the bureau secured a search warrant targeting Trump's campaign.

Former FBI general counsel James Baker met during the 2016 season with at least one attorney from Perkins Coie, the Democratic National Committee's private law firm.

That's the firm used by the DNC and Hillary Clinton's campaign to secretly pay research firm Fusion GPS and Christopher Steele, a former British intelligence operative, to compile a dossier of uncorroborated raw intelligence alleging Trump and Moscow were colluding to hijack the presidential election.

The sign preceded the signal -that incurses the backward look even before before Descartes' cogito, as a social reflection of identity.Can't sleep because of jet lag .

The cogito as am identifiable self on a social basis, tries to predate the answer to the failure of the will, and the developer of the sign as: bubble, sign as the failure of the eye, in the shot to -under lying motif- in esse eat percipii, becomes the ontological necessity .

As if space time was pre tempted of a lasting identifiable sign, and needed to incorporate its signal, a more complex social deviemce, a deviance understood by Leibnitz.

Intentionality tried filling the gap between being and nothingness, and failed miserably. The signs were taken as signals , based on nothing but archytipical essences, mysteriously appearing , Steiner reduced it to such, and probably saw the need of a new ideal , a new reformation. In that effort, along with Blavatsky, and other mysterious compensations.

The mirror of identifiable traits, as odious and mistaken as it has become, necessitated a test, a societal conflict of which the result became a horror show.

A test of will raised by the intentional use of a ladder, which became too much for the heavy load upon which such transmission overbore its capacity.

It broke , and the triad of national, social and and material dialectic came to a crashing halt, when intentionality and the social will to overcome its obstacles lost the transmission of signs of information , and could not connect with any meaningful social signifier signature, with which to indemnify the reason d'etre for its very composite picture of its social significance.

The result was a retro-cultism of the kind Levi Strauss talks about, projected into the ultra modern post understood social contract.

It's social understanding exhibits negative symptoms of cultist, mixed with national boundaries, so as to create a myopic individual bubbling of sources, the social mirror filled with the doubt manufactured by an evil genius, presenting a misunderstood fear of a lack of substance in a material world, leading to ideological vampires, to replace the processes of democracy.

The richest man in the world is approaching the wealth of Solomon, and Amazon, the allegory used to shield vast primitive forests possibility, creates representations of major uneven distribution.

Trumpism is a.cover for am original regression to the Cogito ergo Sum, but only for the lonely, the ones on the pyramid, whose only method is by way of a hidden social control.

Trump knows it, and all bow to the hope of the machine, the love machine that was meant to change the very genetic make up of human life, upon which alter we must oblige , for fear of extinction.

The oligarch habe narrowed their view of intentional wielding of.power to a constant shortening of term, not because they want to, but they have to.

We have agreed son some level that this post contains no real opinion or slant but creates a modicum of impartiality sans an absence of any real dialectical synthesis, but it adheres tacitly on some level by a philosophical leaning toward an empirical approach to a kind of neo~kantism, a futility of, evident to more sophistry then substance.

That this is what's happening is not anxhoixe it is based on a consumer need to. Ompenaate for a xhangingnworld which needs compensating forces.

Trumpism is not a consist ent stream of thought, it is not a functional apparatus but a required body-politic to deal with what materialism post dialectics can consistently contain.

At the end of the road, which really is no end looking back in an era post history, it is said, the pieces will need aethestic distance gleaned from a point of view of appreciating function, of this apparatus .

Until then, it can not be said of a postmodern process ofnthoufj eitjwr be this or that.

WATCH: Special counsel Robert Mueller said they allegedly set up campaign-style rallies in US battleground states.When special counsel Robert Mueller announced indictments in February targeting 13 Russian individuals and three Russian business entities for their alleged roles in a Kremlin-directed election influence campaign, legal experts thought the case had little chance of going forward.

After all, each of the defendants was believed to be safely in Russia, which does not have an extradition treaty with the U.S.

"When those indictments dropped I think it was widely assumed that it was unlikely that any of those defendants would ever appear in a U.S. court," April Doss, a former attorney for the National Security Agency, told ABC News.

But then the Russians did something unexpected. In April, an American law firm told the court it was representing one of the accused businesses entities, Concord Management and Consulting, LLC, that wished to fight the case. Unlike cases against individuals, the American legal system allows for corporate defendants to be represented by an attorney even if no individual from that company is physically present in court. The quirk in the system meant that Concord could fight the charges from Russia without any of its officials actually standing in front of an American judge.

After pleading not guilty to a fraud-related charge, Concord, through the Pittsburg-based law firm Reed Smith, has mounted a spirited defense, challenging the special counsel's office every legal step of the way. Eric Dubelier, the lead attorney for Concord, declined to discuss the case.

Doss, who recently served as senior minority counsel for the Senate Intelligence Committee’s Russia probe, said Concord could be fighting back for "reputational" reasons -- in order to clear its name -- but she and other national security and legal experts told ABC News that Concord, and ultimately the Kremlin, could be up to a more concerning double game: using the U.S. legal system to gather intelligence or undercut the broader Russia probe.

In the same way U.S. officials said Russia pursued different goals in the alleged 2016 election interference campaign to set itself up for what Doss called a "win-win-win" regardless of the election's outcome, she said it's "entirely possible that something similar is happening inside this Concord litigation."

To Matthew Olsen, a former senior official in the Justice Department's national security section and an ABC News consultant, Concord's legal strategy raised a concerning question: what if the Russians were attempting to force an American court to play host to an ongoing intelligence-gathering operation?

Olsen described what could be a new twist on an old espionage and legal tactic known as graymail, in which a defendant argues that their defense requires the disclosure of sensitive information. It could be a legitimate request, or it could be designed to force the U.S. government to make “hard choices” about dropping charges or pursuing them at the risk of exposing sensitive intelligence, Olsen said.

"It definitely comes into play in many if not most espionage cases," he said. A representative for the Russian government in Washington did not respond to ABC requests for comment.

In an early discovery request, Reed Smith requested access to detailed information about special counsel Robert Mueller's investigative methods, including all electronic surveillance of the defendants and identities of any informants involved in the case. It also asked for evidence of any time the U.S. has interfered in a foreign election since the end of the Second World War, a period covering more than 70 years of potential U.S. secrets.

Mark Zaid, a Washington, D.C., attorney who specializes in national security cases, said in August he suspected Concord’s goal was to "expose what the government knows."

"They’re digging. They're fishing," Zaid said.

Due to Concord's purported ties to the Kremlin -- the firm is owned by Yevgeniy Prigozhin, often referred to as "Putin's chef" -- prosecutors appeared concerned that any sensitive information they turned over to the defense could take a detour to Moscow. In a court filing in June, they argued that the judge should impose restrictions on the handling of discovery information because of the "risk of exposing this material to the Russian government."

After some back and forth, the special counsel's office and the defense eventually agreed to use special measures first developed decades ago to deal with cases involving classified information, including a "firewall counsel" who will help decide what information can be shared by defense attorneys with other parties and strict rules about where documents and other materials can be stored.

New York defense attorney Alexei Schacht, whose cases often run into classified information, said the protective system generally works, but is dependent on all parties "playing by the rules."

A view of the four-story building known as the "troll factory" in St. Petersburg, Russia, Feb. 17, 2018. The U.S. government alleged the Internet Research Agency started interfering as early as 2014 in U.S. politics, extending to the 2016 presidential election, saying the agency was funded by a St. Petersburg businessman Yevgeny Prigozhin.Another angle of attack on Mueller

In June, lawyers for Concord deployed another tactic -- filing a motion to dismiss the case by taking aim at Mueller directly and questioning the constitutionality of his appointment.

Doss, the former NSA attorney, said that while a dismissal would be at odds with the intelligence-gathering tactic, either would further Russia's broader interests.

"It doesn't have to be a single choice," she said.

If the legal attack on Mueller had been successful, Doss said the resulting political fallout would "sow discord" in the U.S., which was "the whole goal of the 2016 active measures campaign."

So far Mueller has managed to fend off Concord's and other similar legal challenges, including one by Andrew Miller, an American who defied a subpoena from Mueller by arguing the constitutionality question. In August two judges rejected Concord's bid to formally join in an appeal launched by Miller after his argument was also struck down in a lower court.

Paul Kamenar, Miller's attorney, told ABC News he couldn't speak to Concord’s motivations, but he praised Reed Smith's work on the constitutionality argument and said the firm was doing a "professional and excellent job of making their defense."

Since the unsuccessful argument against Mueller, Concord has challenged the case on other legal grounds, including claiming "selective prosecution," a charge with which the court is now grappling. Doss said that any dismissal would "undermine the effectiveness of the prosecution" in the wider Russia probe and weaken arguments against Russian election meddling internationally -- another "strategic goal" for Moscow.

As the case continues on, seven months after Mueller's original indictments, Concord has not shown any sign of letting up in the legal siege.

"There's no downside," Zaid said. Even if Concord loses its case, "they can just disappear. It's a corporation, and they're not here."

☰A leading Holocaust historian just seriously compared the US to Nazi Germany“If the US has someone whom historians will look back on as the gravedigger of American democracy, it is Mitch McConnell.”By Zack Beauchamp on October 5, 2018 11:21 am

Adolf Hitler at the 1936 Berlin Olympics. Getty ImagesUsually, comparisons between Donald Trump’s America and Nazi Germany come from cranks and internet trolls. But a new essay in the New York Review of Books pointing out “troubling similarities” between the 1930s and today is different: It’s written by Christopher Browning, one of America’s most eminent and well-respected historians of the Holocaust. In it, he warns that democracy here is under serious threat, in the way that German democracy was prior to Hitler’s rise — and really could topple altogether.

Browning, a professor emeritus at the University of North Carolina, specializes in the origins and operation of Nazi genocide. His 1992 book Ordinary Men, a close examination of how an otherwise unremarkable German police battalion evolved into an instrument of mass slaughter, is widely seen as one of the defining works on how typical Germans became complicit in Nazi atrocities.

So when Browning makes comparisons between the rise of Hitler and our current historical period, this isn’t some keyboard warrior spouting off. It is one of the most knowledgeable people on Nazism alive using his expertise to sound the alarm as to what he sees as an existential threat to American democracy.

Browning’s essay covers many topics, ranging from Trump’s “America First” foreign policy — a phrase most closely associated with a group of prewar American Nazi sympathizers — to the role of Fox News as a kind of privatized state propaganda office. But the most interesting part of his argument is the comparison between Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell and Paul von Hindenburg, the German leader who ultimately handed power over to Hitler. Here’s how Browning summarizes the history:

Paul von Hindenburg, elected president of Germany in 1925, was endowed by the Weimar Constitution with various emergency powers to defend German democracy should it be in dire peril. Instead of defending it, Hindenburg became its gravedigger, using these powers first to destroy democratic norms and then to ally with the Nazis to replace parliamentary government with authoritarian rule. Hindenburg began using his emergency powers in 1930, appointing a sequence of chancellors who ruled by decree rather than through parliamentary majorities, which had become increasingly impossible to obtain as a result of the Great Depression and the hyperpolarization of German politics.

Because an ever-shrinking base of support for traditional conservatism made it impossible to carry out their authoritarian revision of the constitution, Hindenburg and the old right ultimately made their deal with Hitler and installed him as chancellor. Thinking that they could ultimately control Hitler while enjoying the benefits of his popular support, the conservatives were initially gratified by the fulfillment of their agenda: intensified rearmament, the outlawing of the Communist Party, the suspension first of freedom of speech, the press, and assembly and then of parliamentary government itself, a purge of the civil service, and the abolition of independent labor unions. Needless to say, the Nazis then proceeded far beyond the goals they shared with their conservative allies, who were powerless to hinder them in any significant way.

McConnell, in Browning’s eyes, is doing something similar — taking whatever actions he can to attain power, including breaking the system for judicial nominations (cough cough, Merrick Garland) and empowering a dangerous demagogue under the delusion that he can be fully controlled:

If the US has someone whom historians will look back on as the gravedigger of American democracy, it is Mitch McConnell. He stoked the hyperpolarization of American politics to make the Obama presidency as dysfunctional and paralyzed as he possibly could. As with parliamentary gridlock in Weimar, congressional gridlock in the US has diminished respect for democratic norms, allowing McConnell to trample them even more. Nowhere is this vicious circle clearer than in the obliteration of traditional precedents concerning judicial appointments. Systematic obstruction of nominations in Obama’s first term provoked Democrats to scrap the filibuster for all but Supreme Court nominations. Then McConnell’s unprecedented blocking of the Merrick Garland nomination required him in turn to scrap the filibuster for Supreme Court nominations in order to complete the “steal” of Antonin Scalia’s seat and confirm Neil Gorsuch. The extreme politicization of the judicial nomination process is once again on display in the current Kavanaugh hearings. ...

Whatever secret reservations McConnell and other traditional Republican leaders have about Trump’s character, governing style, and possible criminality, they openly rejoice in the payoff they have received from their alliance with him and his base: huge tax cuts for the wealthy, financial and environmental deregulation, the nominations of two conservative Supreme Court justices (so far) and a host of other conservative judicial appointments, and a significant reduction in government-sponsored health care (though not yet the total abolition of Obamacare they hope for). Like Hitler’s conservative allies, McConnell and the Republicans have prided themselves on the early returns on their investment in Trump.

This is the key point that people often miss when talking about Hitler’s rise. The breakdown of German democracy started well before Hitler: Hyperpolarization led Hindenburg to strip away constraints on executive power as well as conclude that his left-wing opponents were a greater threat than fascism. The result, then, was a degradation of the everyday practice of democracy, to the point where the system was vulnerable to a Hitler-style figure.

Now, as Browning points out, “Trump is not Hitler and Trumpism is not Nazism.” The biggest and most important difference is that Hitler was an open and ideological opponent of the idea of democracy, whereas neither Trump nor the GOP wants to abolish elections.

What Browning worries about, instead, is a slow and quiet breakdown of American democracy — something more much like what you see in modern failed democracies like Turkey. Browning worries that Republicans have grown comfortable enough manipulating the rules of the democratic game to their advantage, with things like voter ID laws and gerrymandering, that they might go even further even after Trump is gone:

No matter how and when the Trump presidency ends, the specter of illiberalism will continue to haunt American politics. A highly politicized judiciary will remain, in which close Supreme Court decisions will be viewed by many as of dubious legitimacy, and future judicial appointments will be fiercely contested. The racial division, cultural conflict, and political polarization Trump has encouraged and intensified will be difficult to heal. Gerrymandering, voter suppression, and uncontrolled campaign spending will continue to result in elections skewed in an unrepresentative and undemocratic direction. Growing income disparity will be extremely difficult to halt, much less reverse.I’ve observed this kind of modern authoritarianism firsthand in Hungary. In my dispatch after visiting there, I warned of the same thing as Browning does here: The threat to the United States isn’t so much Trump alone as it is the breakdown in the practice of American democracy, and the Republican Party’s commitment to extreme tactics in pursuit of its policy goals in particular.

We are living through a period of serious threat to American democracy. And Browning’s essay, a serious piece by a serious scholar, shows that it’s not at all alarmist to say so.

Is this a collusive piece of propaganda as well? Rember Nazi sympathizers within the rank and file of leading induatrial magnates in this country prior to WW2, most notable among them : Henry Ford.

Only a re-election party on the night of November 3, 2020, could possibly offer the same vindication for America's most unconventional commander in chief as the 36 hours in which two foundational strands of his political career are combining in a sudden burst of history.

Trump will become an undeniably consequential President with the Senate due to vote Saturday to confirm Brett Kavanaugh to the Supreme Court, consecrating the conservative majority that has long been the impossible dream of the GOP.

On Friday, Trump had celebrated the best jobs data for 49 years as the unemployment rate dipped to 3.7%, offering more proof of a vibrant economy that the President says has been unshackled by his tax-reduction program and scything cuts to business regulations.

While his 2016 election campaign was most notable for swirling chaos and shattered norms, Trump's vows to nominate conservative judges to the Supreme Court and to fire up the economy were the glue for his winning coalition.

The struggle to confirm Kavanaugh split the country, deepened mistrust festering between rival lawmakers and threatens to further drag the Supreme Court into Washington's poisoned political stew. But Trump stuck with it and ground out a win.

So he has every right to return to voters in the next four weeks ahead of the midterm elections to argue he has done exactly what he said he would do. He now has a strong message to convince grass-roots Republicans that it's well worth showing up at the polls.

Testing the new messageHe will get his first chance to road-test his new, improved message at a campaign rally in Topeka, Kansas, on Saturday night.

It's ironic that it was Trump, a late convert to conservatism -- not authentic Republicans like President Ronald Reagan, both Bush presidents and beaten GOP nominees Mitt Romney and John McCain -- who finally delivered the Supreme Court majority.

If he is confirmed as expected, Kavanaugh will be Trump's second nominee to reach the court in less than two years, following Neil Gorsuch.

Of course, the Supreme Court win is the culmination of decades of work by conservative activists and was masterminded by the cunning of Senate Majority leader Mitch McConnell. But Presidents get credit when they are in the Oval Office when things go well and Trump, whether it is his fault or not, has taken more than his share of criticism.

Trump has so far been uncharacteristically quiet about his banner day -- perhaps to avoid any last upsets before Saturday's scheduled Senate vote on Kavanaugh's confirmation.

He did pump out two short tweets.

"Very proud of the U.S. Senate for voting 'YES' to advance the nomination of Judge Brett Kavanaugh!" he wrote.

Earlier, he had tweeted: "Just out: 3.7% Unemployment is the lowest number since 1969!"

A President of consequenceThere is more evidence than the soon-to-be reshaped Supreme Court and the roaring economy to make a case that Trump is building a substantial presidency that in many ways looks like a historic pivot point, despite its extremely controversial nature.

Largely unnoticed in the Washington imbroglio over sexual assault allegations against Kavanaugh, the Trump administration is engineering significant changes at home and abroad that often represent sharp revisions of direction from traditional American positions.

This week, for instance, the White House initiated a potentially momentous shift in the US approach to China, recognizing the Asian giant as a global competitor and a threat to American security, prosperity and interests -- reversing decades of policy designed to manage Beijing's ascent as a major power and eventual partner.

The administration is also tightening a vise around Iran in a strategy that threatens to escalate into open confrontation with the Islamic Republic. Elsewhere in the Middle East, a bolstered anti-ISIS strategy has blasted the radical group from its strongholds in shattered Syria. And Trump has rejected decades of US orthodoxy in managing the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, which could have uncertain results.

Trump's bullying approach to trade negotiations has recently yielded remodeled agreements with Canada, Mexico and South Korea. While he exaggerates how much he changed existing deals, he can still boast that his "Art of the Deal" negotiating strategy -- another core component of his appeal to his supporters -- is working.

An announcement of a deeper slashing of refugee admissions by the United States further cements the "America First" philosophy that has changed global strategic assumptions.

At home, Trump's assault on regulations at agencies like the Environmental Protection Agency is accelerating, in a blitz against what Steve Bannon once called the administrative state that fulfills another long-dreamed-of goal of the conservative movement.

The case against the PresidentMany of Trump's perceived achievements are hugely controversial, and his opponents will argue that they stain America's image, reverse a march toward human progress and justice, and will ultimately exert a price the nation will be paying for many years to come.

And Democrats carp that Trump is only building off the far more significant economic work of his predecessor Barack Obama in the wake of the Great Recession and argue that his tax cuts sharply worsened inequality and exploded budget deficits in a way that will haunt the economy for decades.

Trump's critics say his approach to the world threatens to buckle the international system of alliances and a rule-based trading system that made America the richest and most powerful nation in US history and a beacon of democracy.

They say his presidency is in fact most notable for a culture of corruption, falsehood and demagoguery.

There is a case to be made that Trump's constant twisting of truth, invention of false political realities and strategy of tearing at the country's racial, gender and societal divides in order to capture and wield power threaten the eternal values and institutions of the nation itself.

This week, the President stood accused of tax fraud after a New York Times investigation into his family finances in the 1990s. And, though special counsel Robert Mueller has gone quiet in election season, Trump's campaign is under investigation to see whether it conspired with a foreign power to win his election.

The voters will chooseMost credible pollsters have the President at only around 40% approval, a level that is rarely conducive to successful congressional elections. Republicans are in danger of losing the House of Representatives, a scenario that could cripple Trump's White House with relentless committee investigations and even the specter of impeachment.

Often the chaos and discord the President sows distracts from more successful aspects of his presidency, and his raging temperament and insistence on waging perpetual political warfare exhaust many voters.

It will be up to voters in November and in 2020 to decide which of the two interpretations of Trump's presidency -- an era of conservative achievement or a disastrous national distraction -- becomes dominant.

But it already seems that Trump's grand design will be difficult for a future President to quickly reverse.

Less than two weeks ago, foreign diplomats at the United Nations laughed at Trump when he boasted about the historic sweep of his presidency -- and there was no doubt that he was, as usual, exaggerating.

But it's also no longer possible to credibly argue -- despite the distracting blizzard of controversy, busted decorum and staff chaos constantly lashing Washington -- that there is not something significant taking place that is changing the political and economic character of the nation itself.

Last edited by Meno_ on Sat Oct 06, 2018 1:00 pm, edited 1 time in total.

What species, however meager, can the dog offer of her intelligence? Her detractors are 9000. And no one supports her. And the rest of the world does not know her name.

Now, this long crude harangue of a thread, stolen from the what the web sight allows, has found me disgusted by the stench.

---

let it be said, Trump is clearly, in one respect, the apex of democracy, notwithstanding he lost the popular vote by a vast portion, it is that his crassness is most close to vulgar speech, closer than any man ever to come to office

What is indicated is this hundreds of years long coming of simplified, ergo, democratized speech. For instance, at the time of the unveiling of the New Deal Roosevelt had to excise the word provided by his speech writer, with no one "excluded", and place in: no one left out. As quite a few persons would not understand, or have no use for, the word "excluded". Interestingly, in some ways, the dumb public has bent slightly upwards, as compulsory primary education ha given most of us command of such words as excluded these days. Perhaps Trump is the exact meaning of Aristotle's notion of golden mediocrity.

In short, the sage Meno, with her sententious manner, is once again mistaken utterly.

Guide, there is no mistake for as others have sensed some measure of partiality in this forum, there is none. This is just a independent reporting sentiments which polarize the political arena with oaaies which come from opposite side of the spectrum, and as I said before, the word is not pit on either the underpinnings nor the cosmetic manipulation of the supposed 'facts'.

At times it looks like one side has preponderance , at others the contrary.

This appears to be a huge case of exclusion , but rather, it is a case by case process of a game by elimination, as you have noted, and in deed, the moral majority does not appreciate the difference.

Such presents the opportunity to manipulate the public indifference, by squeezing the so called collusive charges onto the gap created, whereas there is none, Irena) carefully crafted . my feeling is that it is a grand show, to postpone as long as possible the coming verdict.

I'm not calling you not right, nor right, because it is too early to tell which outcome will become moat functional and create a largest approved environment. My feeling is, Trumpism will become a hidden independent party by the time the next election rolls around.

What you write is wholly unintelligible. And since you are a thoroughgoing egotist (who imagines their inner dreams are manifest to everyone merely by putting some symbols to paper), a clock-work drone, who refuses to communicate with others your meaning, one must excoriate you as a dullard with the flurry of forces appropriate to the hate of the vile evil of idiocy. Befouling mediocrities like yourself must be obliterated from the face of the earth. You have absolutely no understanding or sense of the world, you simply are unconscious of this living in a bubble of images of others that are wholly empty, and that makes such ones as yourself a negative and malignant reality.

Guide wrote:What you write is wholly unintelligible. And since you are a thoroughgoing egotist (who imagines their inner dreams are manifest to everyone merely by putting some symbols to paper), a clock-work drone, who refuses to communicate with others your meaning, one must excoriate you as a dullard with the flurry of forces appropriate to the hate of the vile evil of idiocy. Befouling mediocrities like yourself must be obliterated from the face of the earth. You have absolutely no understanding or sense of the world, you simply are unconscious of this living in a bubble of images of others that are wholly empty, and that makes such ones as yourself a negative and malignant reality.

.

At first the insults were kind of funny, and I thought at first they were meant to be irony , but it soon appeared to devolve into downright exhibitions of Ill will and rudeness.

The shallowness you mention is obviously caused by an inadequate reading of the principles of philosophy, and the compensations inherent in the many used ad-hominems, and intermixed by strange and angry rhetoric, which do not seem like a pleasant way for intelligent and helpful discourse to commence.

Guido the nut gutter I had terrible day and I reread your diatribe and decided not to be so harsh. You may be right about the bubble and it reminds me of Zazecs conscription and allow you further to torture me

Bubble on the otherwise you . the inside looking in if that's conceivable, a munch edward figurization that at times I expect to rejection, for it befuddles bemoans inscription.

Apology not, feelings cut, apoplectic and oxymoronic, yet .

So never me mind Trumpism isn't the thing for a new York minute description the last the mirrored last miniscule possibility for an impersonal catharsis.otherwise the photonegative collapse into smaller and smaller menos.

Now the anathema of a totallyregressed masochism caustic descriptive return into the narcissism of total masochistic ideation , yes, with pictures even.

Žižek.ukSlavoj Žižek on Peter Sloterdijk: The revolution does take place, just differentlySlavoj Žižek Slavoj Žižek1 year ago

Slavoj Žižek on Peter Sloterdijk: The revolution does take place, just differently

Peter Sloterdijk is one of the most accurate diagnosticians of our time. In his work Rage and Time, from the distinction between Eros (desire, that is the desire to possess, that is the possession of objects) and Thymos (pride, that is giving-willing, that is recognition) he offers an alternative history of the West – that is, as history of anger management. The “Iliad”, its founding text, begins in fact with the word “anger.” Homer calls the goddess to stand by him when he sings the song of the anger of Achilles. Although the quarrel between Achilles and Agamemnon concerns a woman – Agamemnon robbed Achilles of his slave girl Briseis – it is not about the loss of an erotic object, but about injured pride. And that is Sloterdijk’s point.

While anger can explode in ancient Greece, he experiences a profound change in the Jewish-Christian tradition, a sublimation, a postponement. No longer us, but God is keeping a record of our transgressions, and decides on the Day of Judgment. The Christian prohibition of revenge is the exact counterpart to the apocalyptic scene of the last days. The idea of ​​a Last Judgment, in which all the accumulated debts are paid off and a world out of joint is corrected, lives in secularized form in modern leftist projects.

Now the judge is no longer God but the people. Left political movements in fact act like Anger-Banks (Zorn-Banken). They collect collective Anger-Investment (Zorn-Investitionen) and, in turn, promise the people long-term Revenge-Interest (Rache-Zinsen), thus establishing a more just world. Because after the revolutionary Anger-Explosion (Zorn-Explosion) the ultimate payment never takes place, and inequality and hierarchy always reappear, there is always an urge for the second – true, total – revolution. It is only to satisfy the disappointed and to bring the liberation to an end: in 1792 after 1789, October after February 1917.

And the revolution?If there is no real proletariat at this stage, the revolution could just be transferred to imported substitute subjects Click To TweetThis leads us to the great problem of Western Marxism today: the absence of a revolutionary subject. Who could take the role of the proletariat? The farmers in the Third World, students and intellectuals are excluded. In the meantime, the refugees are to revive the European left, after the motto: If there is no real proletariat at this stage, the revolution could just be transferred to imported substitute subjects. This way of thinking is cynical through and through. It bears witness to a leftist paternalism, quite apart from the fact that it gives new impetus to the violence against immigrants.

The problem is that there is simply never enough spontaneous Anger-Capital (Zorn-Kapital) – that is why the leaders have been borrowing from other Anger-Banks, like the Nation or Culture. In Fascism, the national anger prevailed. In China’s communism, Mao mobilized the cultural anger of the exploited peasantry. In our time there are two main types of anger left: the anger of the losing Islamic modernists against the decadent system of capitalism, and the wrath of the right-wing populists that is aimed at immigrants. In lesser form, Latin American populists, consumerists and other representatives are resentful of the refusal to recognize globalization. The only thing that is clear: the situation is confusing, all the different forms of anger (Zorn-Formen) do not come together.

[…]

Corbyn shall do it[…]

[Extract. Originally appeared at Neue Zürcher Zeitung on June 26th 2017. Translation by Ippolit Belinski (and google translate), a complete and better translation is welcome.]

I believe it is right to add this clarification. The destruction of persons of negative and malignant mental development like Meno is analogous to the removal of wolves form the nature of pre-modern man. Intelligence scrapes out only the most endangered and penurious life. So long as intelligence is inadequately established idiots must be destroyed, their menace to human existence is synonymous to that of gigantic abiotic disaster to primitive peoples. If intelligence were sufficiently established, one could allow such dire doltishness as finds us in Meno to go on attempting to inveigle her fellows so far as we remain in nubibus and not yet discovering the methods needful to the neutralization of predatory animals, for instance by placing them in natural reserves and zoos. But one can not do that when intelligence is not sufficiently established. Such clock-work egotistically absorbed ones as "Meno" must be suppressed if intelligence should ever get its footing.

Meno is likely just a Schlagwort of sorts. The disjecta membra of the “smaller and smaller menos” only happens in the buzzword. The buzzword is meno’s name for time. But, for “Meno”, time, is clock-work crassness and more there is not.

René Char has made the assertion that the “beau risque” of radically despising the menos and their toxic unconsciousness, and identification with their utter egotism, is not wholly incomprehensible to the poet. For the poet lassos the mere symbol meno under several conceptions. Thus snapping the neck of the savage animal.

WORLDCOLIN POWELL SAYS DONALD TRUMP HAS TURNED AMERICA FROM 'WE THE PEOPLE' TO 'ME THE PRESIDENT'By Benjamin Fearnow On Sunday, October 7, 2018 - 12:53Colin PowellFormer Secretary of State Colin Powell said he doubts President Donald Trump can ever be a "moral leader" and has turned "We the People" into "Me the President."PHOTO: GETTY IMAGES | OLIVIER DOULIERY / STRINGER

Former U.S. Secretaries of State Colin Powell and Madeleine Albright both questioned the dramatic negative effects the Trump administration has had on the United States and its people Sunday.

Speaking with CNN's Fareed Zakaria Sunday, Powell criticized Trump's attacks on the news media, close U.S. allies and even its own citizens. Powell lamented his three favorite words in the U.S. Constitution have long been "we the people," but Trump's short time in office has morphed the famous Founding Fathers line into "me the President."

“You see things that should not be happening,” Powell told CNN's Zakaria. “How can a president of the United States get up and say that the media is the enemy of Americans? Hasn’t he read the First Amendment? You are not supposed to like everything the press says, or what anyone says…that’s why we have a First Amendment, to protect that kind of speech.”

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Powell reitarated why he became a voice against a Trump presidency during the 2016 campaigns.

“I hope the president can come to the realization that he should really stop insulting people,” Powell continued. “I used this two years ago when I said I could not vote for him in the 2016 election. Why? He insulted everybody. He insulted African-Americans, he insulted women, he insulted immigrants. He insulted our best friends around the world -- all of his fellow candidates up on the stage during the debates. I don’t think that’s what should be coming out of a president of the United States. But I don’t see anything that’s changed in the last two years.”

Powell asked Americans and Congress to "take a hard look at yourself" to realize what "you're doing to keep these forces in check." He ridiculed not just what the Trump administration is doing, but instead what others "are not doing as the United States of America. What are we doing? We’re walking away from agreements, we’re walking away from alliances,” Powell continued.

“The world is watching,” Powell added. “They cannot believe we’re doing things like separating mothers and children who are trying to get across the border from south of our border. They can’t believe we’re making such an effort to cease immigration coming into the country. It’s what’s kept us alive